To me, what makes space combat cool is watching my ship react to combat. There’s not enough of that, in my opinion, but everything there is adds to the prettiness of the slaughter. Watching repair drones come out to repair damage, scramblers and point-defense firing at incoming missiles, escape pods fleeing an explosion, and even defensive lasers firing at fighters as they swoop by. I would like it if shield beams could strengthen the shield in the direction of incoming fire, if faster ships would attempt to dodge an incoming missile, or if bullets can be fired at incoming missiles or plasma. Anything that is REACTING to the circumstances of the battle always looks cool to me.
Very nice, and I agree it’s amazing to watch.
My personal favorite is just watching the hulls of ships getting compromised by incoming fire. The riddles of explosions followed by the smoking holes all over their ship.
Favorite… I suppose it’s a question of favorite for what. Visual… effect… or ideal.
Well, in terms of raw effect, I love me Ion Cannons, Cruiser Lasers. Rapid-Fire, Shield-Crushing, and just plain effective. Not too long in reach or low in cost or energy/crew requirements. But visually they just lack that certain something that a space battle is supposed to have in our pop-culture addled minds.
Beam weapons give that visual that just leaves me going ‘… ohsweetbabyjesusthatbecool’ when they start blasting. Nice wide lances of colored light going all over the place. But they just wimp out against shields. It makes me sad for all the flash to just be… flash.
Missiles have the effectiveness and range but just seem so… modern and ‘today’ rather than super advanced plasma launchers and beam weapons. In a more dorky-geeky-math sense, they seem to suffer far more from inaccuracy than other weapons, and are subject to a rather wide range of countermeasures, but just CRUSH anything not prepared for them or able to evade. Visually badass in their own right.
Plasma Launchers are alright in effect, in limitations, but visually they seem… small. Insignificant. I almost want to say they need a soft halo around the bolt as it screams across the game-space. I can ‘see’ the beam weapons, the missiles, but these feel like they ‘should’ be visually noticeable considering the pain they can bring and yet they’re not.
Visually- Beam/Missiles
Effect- Ion Cannon/Plasma Launchers
Ideal- Whining on my part.
Fast Missiles. Especially when they all open up on an enemy ship at once, with dozens of red streaks firing at a ship, then flowering into deadly blossems that knock the shields down, then the armor, then the ship in a single salvo… Mhhm. They’re so pretty!
Bigger
Brighter
Massively bright detonation
Louder
Bigger
More explosions as a chain reaction to hitting fuel tanks that plasma goes for
Much louder
More damage
more explosions
did I mention bigger?